In both pharming and phishing attacks an attacker can create websites that look similar to legitimate sites with the intent of collecting personal identifiable information from its victims. What is th

Pharming and phishing are distinct attack vectors - pharming is DNS or host-level manipulation while phishing is a social engineering technique using deceptive communications.

In a pharming attack, an attacker poisons the victim's DNS cache, modifies the local hosts file, or compromises a DNS server so that a legitimate domain resolves to a malicious IP address. This redirection occurs transparently without requiring the victim to click a deceptive link. This distinguishes pharming from phishing, which relies on social engineering via emails or messages containing malicious links.

Phishing does not modify host configuration; it relies on deceptive links in emails or messages to trick users into navigating to a fraudulent site voluntarily.

Both attacks can incorporate social engineering elements, and phishing in particular is primarily a social engineering attack, making this characterization incorrect.